


as i could not stop

by VagabondDawn



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Gen, Implied Character Death, Mystery, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 00:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19841587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VagabondDawn/pseuds/VagabondDawn
Summary: Red Team aborts a mission partway through; something isn’t quite right.





	as i could not stop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CookieBlaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieBlaze/gifts).



“You guys left me behind? Rude.” 

Shikako — ANBU Bat — takes brief pleasure in the way her team spins around, startled by the sound of her voice. It isn’t exactly _fair_ for her to use her superior stealth to sneak up on them, especially while they’re out on a mission... 

But it _is_ funny. 

Their ANBU seals flare brightly. It’s a request for identification, but one that’s dangerous while there might still be enemies around to sense the chakra output. They just finished one fight and sure Bat _can_ sense if there’s anyone nearby but it’s poor form to be so sloppy. Her team can be accused of a lot of things, but sloppiness isn’t usually one of them. 

Still, she flares her seal in return. It takes more concentration and willpower than normal and the result seems somewhat underpowered; messing with it to remove all the overrides might not have been the best plan after all. Whoops. 

She’ll have to see what she broke, when she gets home and can examine it more thoroughly. 

“My chakra is all kinds of weird right now,” she excuses, lest they think she _is_ an imposter. And then, even though she _knows_ it’ll make Hawk-taicho overbearing, adds, “I got knocked out with some kind of jutsu.” 

There hadn’t _seemed_ to be any kind of chakra restraint on her, seal or otherwise, so it probably wasn’t meant to be a long term jutsu. Her chakra and focus are kinda hazy, but that’ll probably sort itself out soon. Thankfully, it seems like the rest of the team has dealt with her opponent as well as their own, though it’s still kinda embarrassing to have ended floored like that. 

Ah well, that’s what team mates are for. 

Hawk-taicho tucks a scroll away out of sight — she catches a glimpse of the black ink painted around the edges, meaning it’s a body scroll, which probably answers the question of where all their enemies ended up— and turns towards her. 

“ID code?” he asks, clearing his throat. He sounds raspy, like he’s been overusing his Great Fireball Jutsu. 

Bat promptly rattles off her ANBU ID and then a whole bunch of other identifiers after that, when Towa and Komachi demand them. Hawk-taicho is staring at her with a slump to his shoulders — kinda weary, but a little relieved, like she’s done something terribly impossible and now he has to deal with the consequences. 

Geeze, did she scare them _that_ badly? 

Hawk crosses the distance, standing close enough to her that she can feel the heat radiating off his body. She hadn’t realised she was cold, but she has to stop herself from leaning towards him. He’s not using full stealth, but this soon after a fight it’s generally more efficient to just let yourself cool down naturally anyway — and fight itself has a bigger chance of attracting attention than a little thermal radiation. 

She bets that beneath his mask, his sharingan is on. The force of his attention is starting to become a little bit unnerving. 

“Rule one?” he asks, voice hushed enough that Towa and Komachi won’t overhear — unless they’re shamelessly eavesdropping. 

She would, in their circumstances. Even if she currently doesn’t _quite_ know what those circumstances are. 

“Don’t die,” Bat says, smirking. 

Hawk heaves a weary, exasperated sigh. But apparently— 

“Who did we find in the river?” he asks. 

“Kisuke Maboroshi,” Bat answers, more slowly. She tilts her head to the side. “Did someone just pretend to be me?” 

There’s _too many_ challenges just for standard regrouping. And sure, ANBU protocol is to always go overboard when required — they just _love_ identity challenges — this is getting kinda weird. 

And okay, Shikako _thrives_ on weird, but it’s not usually coming from Sasuke. That makes it bad. That makes it _an issue._

“Something like that,” Hawk says, running a hand through his hair. His voice goes remote, like he’s plotting and planning, instead of focusing on her. “We need to head back to Konoha.” 

As far as she had known, the mission had been going _fine._

“Did they say something during the fight?” Bat asks. 

Hawk hesitates. “The mission is a bust,” is all he says, instead of explaining _why the change in plans._ And sure, ANBU was all about classified information and need-to-know-basis and listening to orders without question… 

But not her. Not Sasuke. 

She does not like this _at all._

“Don’t worry about it,” Sasuke says forcefully. “Just focus on getting home. That’s your one job now.” 

“My chakra isn’t _that_ fucked up,” she says, a touch irritated. He _wouldn’t_ abandon a mission just because he thought she couldn’t handle it. He _wouldn’t._ “I can make it home just fine.” 

“Tsunade will be the judge of that,” Hawk says darkly, which is just plain rude. 

Beneath her mask, Bat crinkles her nose. “Are you _sure_ we shouldn’t finish the mission first?” 

She’s not sure they’ve ever just… stopped mid mission before. Not even in the Land of Wind with the release of Gelel . Not even in the Land of Moon, though at that point, mission completion there had been completely incidental to her own goal of retrieving the natural energy glove. 

“No,” Hawk says, with firm finality that means he _really_ won't be convinced. “I’ve already called it. We’re going home.” 

* * *

Of course, Red Team is far enough from Konoha that it’s not so simple. They have to run back, and don’t even make camp when night falls. Instead they fall into a pattern of stopping briefly every few hours to eat and stretch, and then continue running. 

It’s a far harder pace than they set at the start of the mission — which means Hawk-taicho is really worried about whatever information he learnt during the fight.. 

Bat manages to keep up easily enough, despite her chakra being ‘weird’. She keeps her muscles from fatiguing and she’s too wired with adrenaline to really be interested in eating or drinking. If she needs to, she has her mouth seals anyway — she can consume sustenance as they run in ways the others can’t. 

When they stop the first time, Hawk-taicho takes her to the side of the clearing, far enough away to talk without being overheard again. 

“The seal?” Hawk asks, abruptly. 

“My ANBU seal?” Bat clarifies, frowning beneath her mask, trying to work out where this non-sequitur has come from. Did he notice that it was underpowered? Why even bring it up now? 

“No, Kisuke’s seal,” Hawk says as if it’s _obvious_ which one he’s talking about and she should follow his thought process without explanation. 

Usually, she can. That’s a problem. 

“What about it?” Bat asks, instead of retorting that at times she could be thinking of at least a dozen _that seal_ ’s. 

“Can you make one? Something like it?” 

Bat shifts uneasily. “It’s… ethically dubious to bind people beyond their death,” she says, very cautiously. “Even voluntarily. It starts to be a _very_ slippery slope and it’s not exactly a technique I want to make public. Look at what happened to Edo Tensei — people argue that if we just use prisoners or our enemies then we could have S-rank ninja fighting for us without risk of loss.” 

Hawk nods, like he hears her words but they’re totally irrelevant. “Right,” he agrees. “But. Could you? For me?” 

Shikako hesitates. She hates herself a little that she doesn’t automatically say _no._ Everything she just said still remains valid, and yet. _For me._

“Are you about to do something stupid and risky?” she asks, suspiciously. “Because—“ 

“No more than usual,” he cuts her off. Which is really about the best she can hope for. But he fumbles his next words strangely, and she knows it’s not the real reason. Or not the whole reason. “Just… as a fail safe. I… we aren’t done yet.” 

Bat stares off into the distance. Something niggles at her brain, like the pieces of a puzzle starting to come together, like an alert notification telling her something important is happening. She chases it, but can’t catch it. 

Probably he _is_ going to do something stupid. And Sasuke’s _something stupid’_ s generally involve fighting S-rank ninja. Great. 

“Probably,” she admits reluctantly. “I’ve already studied it in depth, so it’d be pretty simple to recreate it. I’d want to include a bunch of changes, though. Things to get around some of the… worst aspects of it. And there’s no real way to test them so it’d be a bit of a gamble…” 

Hawk nods. “Please make it,” he says, and it’s the _please_ that does it. Sasuke doesn’t say please. She would think it’s an imposter if she couldn’t sense him so clearly. 

_Definitely_ about to do something stupid. 

“Okay,” she says. 

A fail safe isn’t a bad idea. But Kisuke — and the ghost of Kubisake that had hung around on sheer willpower alone — had been much too limited. Sasuke wouldn’t be happy simply watching and spying, unable to act; she wouldn’t trap him like that. But with the right seal... 

Hawk moves as if to clasp her on the shoulder but hesitates before he makes contact. He drops his hand and gives her a nod instead. “Okay. Okay.” 

* * *

When they get back to Konoha, Hawk-taicho takes them straight to the Hokage Tower and barges into Tsunade’s office without warning… but leaves the three of them to wait in the outer hallway because he ‘has to report in first’. 

Rude. 

“No, really,” Bat drawls to the remained of her also-exiled team. “I missed something big, didn’t I?” 

Neither Komachi nor Towa answer her. They very _deliberately_ don’t answer her or make eye contact or look in her direction, staring at the opposite wall like awkward ANBU statues, trying to have no part in the resolution of _whatever_ has happened. 

Shikako huffs and pulls her notebook out of hammerspace to at least write down the seal Sasuke made her think about all the way home. But it drops straight out of her hands and onto the floor. 

Both of them jump like startled cats, and then try to pretend they weren’t startled at all 

“Sorry,” she murmurs and flicks it back into hammerspace with a tap from her foot. Sure, not talking to her was annoying but it’s clearly on Hawk-taicho’s say-so and she can’t hold it against them; she wasn’t deliberately trying to startle them while they’re tense. That’s cruel. 

Still… she frowns beneath her mask. She’s a _ninja_. She hasn’t _dropped things_ since early in the Academy, if then. Learning how to stick to things, or stick things to her, with chakra had been something she’d mastered long before she went to the Academy. 

And her chakra still has that weird unsettled feeling, like it’s half what it should be. 

The niggling thought returns, louder and more insistent. She’s pretty sure she knows what it’s saying, this time, she just... 

Doesn’t want to believe it. 

Tsunade’s door opens. The Hokage calls her codename. Towa and Komachi swivel their masks towards her. 

Shikako stares at the door like it might just be a portal to hell and takes one cautious step after the other towards it, resisting the urge to flee in the other direction. The truth is, most unfortunately, not in Tsunade’s office. 

_You can’t out run it, princess_ , she’d told a woman in the Land of Snow years ago. _You take it with you._

A most unfortunate call back. Her own words come around to bite her. 

She steps through the doorway. Sasuke closes it behind her, so she doesn’t have to try and touch it. 

“Whose body was in that scroll?” she asks. 

Sasuke and Tsunade exchange looks. 

Shikako takes off her mask and holds it in her hands and it _feels real._ Solid. Textured. Nothing to say it isn’t. 

But she lets it fall from her hands and it vanishes, fading into nothingness, dissipating into the natural energy of the world, chakra without an anchor unable to hold its form. 

A ghost. 

Just like the rest of her. 

“Nara!” Tsunade snaps, dragging her attention back from where it had started to wander. “Keep it together. Are we on a deadline here? How can we fix this?” 

_Keep it together._ If she doesn’t, if she isn’t focused, will she fade away too? 

Carefully, Shikako stuffs all thoughts of death and the afterlife into a small tiny box in her head, to be thought about later. Or never. Never would be _so good._

“What’s… the status of the body?” she asks, as clinically as she’s able to. As if it’s not her. It isn’t. She’s right here. 

Tsunade’s face is grim. “Beyond repair,” is all she says. 

Shikako doesn’t know if that’s her own examination or Sasuke’s report, but she supposes it doesn’t matter. Sasuke wouldn’t make that call if there was any chance of healing. He wouldn't have made that call before sealing her into a body scroll. 

Shikako licks her lips, a habitual motion. There’s the slight sweetness of her lip balm. The roughness of cracked skin. The wetness of saliva. None of it is real. Just… impressions of chakra, of spiritual energy that she’s interpreting as senses. 

But Shadow State hadn’t been _real_ either. It was insubstantial. Had no mass. Just chakra in a particular form, in a particular shape. 

Reality was fluid. 

“I believe,” she says, voice measured, because there’s hope there, an answer and a solution, “that it would be _possible_ to create a… life like chakra simulacrum. Something similar to a shadow clone, but permanent. It would need to be able to generate physical energy on its own in order to sustain itself long term. The problem is that the initial chakra input — Yin and Yang energy, I think — needed to make something like that would be… enormous.” 

Orochimaru had been able to do it, using Anko’s seal and Juugo’s proto-sage mode to create himself a flawless new body. The proto-sage mode that they have no chance of getting access to in the near future. Without that… its much more costly. 

“How high?” Tsunade asks, tapping her fingers onto her desk, as if this is any other consultation. She’s used to impossible odds. Twice as used to them from Team 7. Her calm is grounding, reassuring. 

Shikako names a figure and then shrugs helplessly. “Theoretically, it would be best to store your own chakra in advance. Then it’d have the correct resonance and be the most stable… but I haven’t mastered chakra storage yet. I suppose we can try and gather enough people to donate a small fraction of the total and use a transfusion jutsu to try and combine it…” 

Crowdsourcing chakra. It doesn’t _sound_ like an ideal solution, but it’s _something._ Better than nothing. Better than giving up and fading away. 

“If Naruto were here…” Sasuke says, eyes narrowed like he means to go and find Naruto _right now_ and drag him back to donate the chakra. He even takes a step towards the window. 

Tsunade holds up a hand to stop him. “Luckily,” she says, dryly. “Yin and Yang chakra storage is something I’m somewhat a master of. And I’m sure I can modify the shadow clone jutsu as you’re describing.” 

Shikako’s eyes are drawn to the purple diamond on her forehead and she can’t believe she ever forgot about it. “Oh.” 

Not just hope, not just a wild risk and a chance and throwing herself to the mercy of her own seal. They have someone, right here, who has the knowledge. Who has the skill and is the undisputed master of putting bodies back together. 

If anyone can do this, it’s Tsunade. 

Shikako takes a deep, unnecessary breath. “Thank you, Tsunade-sama.” 

“You should know by now,” Tsunade says, a little wry, “that I prefer for all my ninja to return from their missions _alive_.” 

“It’s a work in progress,” Shikako replies. 

**Author's Note:**

> Request by CookieBlaze  
> Fandom: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen 
> 
> Nara Shikako (DoS)  
> Uchiha Sasuke (DoS)
> 
> All: Ghost Who Doesn't Realize They are Dead  
> All: Character Is Dead And Doesn't Know It AU
> 
> I am 100% okay with angst.


End file.
